I Refuse to Smite.

It’s a craptastic spell that has a lame animation. I’m not editing your face off, I’m smiting. Like holy death from above. Sissy slash is sissy.

Now what does Elitist Jerks say? They say that they don’t know how it’s gonna pan out at 85, but stuff is so easysauce now that we should practice smiting builds. NO! That is the path to the dark side.

Do you think the Lich King is gonna give me a break from pre-bubbling for infest so I can throw a sissy fairy dust slash at his face? Yeah I think not. We downed him for the first time last weekend and there was absolutely NO smiting involved.

Stay strong, non-smiters! To borrow from Alamo, “Disk Preest is 4 heels.” Focus not on our smites but on our giant penance.

Comments

I Refuse to Smite. — 24 Comments

“That is the path to the dark side.”
Technically, that’s shadow spec.
You know, the thing I liked about my priest when I first rolled up? I was cackling endlessly about how I always wanted a “Smite” key for my PC … AND NOW I HAD ONE!
I’m easy to please…

Maybe you have seen my recent blogpost on holy qualms where I agree with the issues of having to include a ‘smite-rota’ in our future healing style. however as i’ve linked there too, i’m pretty certain both disc AND holy will be condemned to do this in Cataclysm and it’s even more annoying for holypriests imo. =/
*SIGH*

I just don’t see how a smiting build will work unless the math makes it such that it costs less mana to smite + heal than to simply heal + heal. I did read both your post and the one on Wow Insider and my reaction was “well shit.” But I’m not going to freak out until Elitist Jerks tells me what is best. And they haven’t weighed in on this as far as I can tell. If they do tell me that Smite is required for both holy AND disc, I may have to rethink my “no-tree-no-druid” stance, or pick up shamaning again.

They already assigned pretty much all decursing to the healers by putting many decursing abilities in the healing trees. Making us also juggle DPSing is just TOO HARD!

Indeed I don’t think many of us are fond of the prospect of having to juggle up to 5 smites on top of everything else…
and you’re right of course: the mana return from several smites will have to be massive enough for us to consider it. we’ll see.

I have to say – I finally got around to using my baby priest’s disc spec yesterday. Not such a baby any more, she’s 77 now. But the last few weeks I’ve been having fun as shadow. I had a blast using smite, but then, I was in lowbie dungeons. I managed about 500 dps (or about 2/3rds as much as the next lowest in recount) and kept everyone alive and I kept trying things like “Smite 5 times, then Holy Fire a mob, woo-hoo!”

Now in raids or other srs bzns? Not likely, I’d be too worried about keeping people alive.

I’ve never thought that healers needed to follow the “ABC” (always be casting) model for caster DPS. I had envisioned healing as a management safety net and that, yes, sometimes you stand there and do nothing, then you spring to action when needed… maybe other healers were dissatisfied with having periods of rest and need something to ease their twitches.

Oddly enough I quite enjoy smiting, though I admit it’s hard to weave in on such hectic fights such as the Lich King, but from what I understand such a cruel enforcement of EVERYONE MUST BE ABOVE 90% AT ALL TIMES OR DEATH WILL HAUNT YOU FOREVER isn’t going to be the standard. Keeping players around 75% to 80% will be the norm.
That said, I keep getting bored of infest-bubbling post-patch and just bubble melee, Smite and then spam holy nova to get it off the ranged. Easycakes! Also, sparklier!

I’m happy infest-bubbling is dying a painful death. Once you got infest-bubbling you never could go out of that mindset of IF NOT EVERYONE HAS WEAKENED SOUL 100% THEY WILL ALL DIEEEE that I’m only just shaking off after… Uh… Too many months…

I gave it a shot in one battleground, lured by the thought of pretty shiny wings. Unfortunately the opposing team were really selfish and wouldn’t stop hitting people so I was forced to heal. I found it was really only useful towards the end of combat for smiting down enemy healers once the battle was already won.
Things I don’t like about it. For it to be anywhere close to efficient, we’ll need the glyph of accuracy, which takes away a glyph slot from something more useful. The five stack is clunky, especially when compared to say the Shaman version of Telluric currents. The fact that according to wowhead, lightning bolt costs 6 percent of base mana compared to smite costing 15 percent of ours, is also a factor.
Cast time, in PvP, standing around casting smite is dangerous. I get kicked that’s my healing school locked down. In PvE, it means that’s a lot of non-healing time casting your smites (of which you really need all to hit).
As Holy, I’m really opposed to it. We already have too many timers and procs to keep an eye on without trying to weave smites in every 15 seconds.
However the throughput gain might big enough to warrant this. For example if you know a massive aoe is coming up, it might be worth stacking up your smites just before hand for 15 percent more burst. I think we shouldn’t look at it as a source of regen, but more a way of ramping up our output.

The cast time is pretty fail, not just in PvP. At least as healing is now, I can see myself having to cancel smite-casts to cast an emergency heal if someone is about to croak. In cata we’re supposedly not going to have “zomg the tank can die in 2 hits” situations… supposedly.

I totally agree. I think there was a quote somewhere that best suited the new smite builds, something along the lines of:
“And now , like the American health system the knife will be passed from the surgeons to the accountants…”

I’m kind of … okay … with the smitelol. I know, I know this mades me a heretic. I mean, it wouldn’t be my healing model of choice but I’m reserving judgement until I see it in action in Cata. And, honestly, I quite enjoy having something to do when I’m not blasting out heals – having extra tools to control your mana return is very useful indeed, as well guaranteed healing increases for large incoming damage bursts. I mean a 15% healing increase is the equivalent to a trinket proc. I quite like the weaving style of it, to be honest – it initially feels a lot of juggle but I’m getting used to it now. And also I like the relationship it develops between you and your fellow healers – you get very tuned into their patterns of healing, because obviously you’re seeking opportunities to smite as well as heal. A also you spend more time trusting them and less time inadvertantly heal sniping because healers are 4 healz.

Well, given that overgearing and general experience with the raid content means that you really need 1.5 healers for ICC these days, it pretty much fits that perfectly. Also, bear in mind that current raid content is designed with the assumption that healers are going to be healing constantly – Cata raid content will be designed with the assumption that disc priests are smiting.